Trump’s military picks raise fears over national security strategy

For someone who once claimed to “know more than the generals” about Isis, Donald Trump seems to crave the opinion of men in uniform.

With the likely nomination of John Kelly to run the homeland security department, Mr Trump will have chosen a third retired general for his national security team, after the selection of James “Mad Dog” Mattis as defence secretary and Michael Flynn, a controversial intelligence officer, as national security adviser.

At the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr Trump has nominated Mike Pompeo, a West Point graduate and retired army captain. And he is considering retired general David Petraeus for secretary of state and Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, for director of national intelligence, the role that oversees the entire US intelligence community.

The reliance on military figures has prompted warnings about national security strategy in the Trump administration — both that the military could become more politicised and that policy could become too militarised.

Republicans in Congress are already paving the way to arrange a waiver to allow Mr Mattis to serve despite a decades-old rule that military officers must be out of uniform for seven years before being appointed Pentagon chief. But some Democrats want to block any effort to circumvent a law that was put in place to ensure civilian control of the military.

Few critics would go as far as Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, who warned on Twitter that the cabinet was “starting to look like a military junta”. But many believe the appointments could erode the necessary political buffers that separate the civilian and military worlds.

“Many of these generals stand out because what they can do is so remarkable,” says Philip Carter, a retired army officer at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “But one of the dangers is that it militarises the approach to different policy issues.”

The presence of so many generals might not come as a surprise, given the military’s status as the most respected institution in the US. American voters have shown they resent the decade and half of wars that the country has been involved in, but they lionise the veterans who have fought for their freedom.

A former student of New York Military Academy, Mr Trump often veered during the election campaign between veneration of past generals, notably George Patten and Douglas MacArthur, and biting attacks on the current generation of commanders who he claimed had been “reduced to rubble”.

The first risk of having so many senior military figures in his cabinet is the impact on the active military. With their eyes on high-level posts in a future administration once they retire, some commanders might be tempted to tailor their advice to politicians in order to win favour.

Martin Dempsey, former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, warned over the summer about the growing presence in political campaigns of retired military, including Mr Flynn and John Allen, a former Marines general who was supporting Hillary Clinton.

“I worry . . . about military people angling for political jobs as retirement approaches,” says Kori Schake, a Stanford scholar who co-wrote a book this year with Gen Mattis about civil-military relations.

The second potential problem is that in a Trump administration dominated by generals, there is a risk that the military may be seen as the solution for many problems and that other approaches will be played down. With a budget that dwarfs other parts of the government, the tendency to look first to the Pentagon for answers during a crisis could become more pronounced. The symbolism of having a former general running DHS, which is responsible for border security and a range of other domestic security issues, has left some uncomfortable.

However, some of Mr Trump’s generals do not fit easily into a warmongering stereotype. Mr Kelly is the highest ranking recent officer to have lost a child in war after his son Robert, also a Marine, was killed in Afghanistan.

Mr Mattis, who has often called for an increase in the state department budget, warned this year that Americans had forgotten the huge death tolls that came with war. He said the public view was “that we can do what we wish with the Petri dish called the military and there is no consequence” and that “there needs to be a little more humility and a little more modesty on the part of those who may have statutory, legal, constitutional authority over the military”.

And while some Democrats have raised concerns about civilian control of the military, others have welcomed the appointment of Mr Mattis to the Pentagon because they believe he will act as a restraining influence on Mr Trump, rather than push him into action.

The final problem is that military officers do not always make good politicians or White House officials. The most respected national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, was an Air Force general, but Alexander Haig, a former army general, had to resign as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state after just over a year after causing a civil-military crisis following an assassination attempt on the president.

Michael Mullen, former chairman of the joint chiefs, recently said he was worried about the “militarisation of the government”. Mr Mullen said many military brass did not understand enough about politics to navigate that world. “I don’t care what any of them say, they don’t know what they are getting into,” he said.

Twitter: @DyerGeoff; @dimi

Letter in response to this article:

US national security arena needs more than warriors / From Dr Leif Rosenberger